Much of world history and culture has been the result of the operation of the systems of thought, prescribed behavior and other strictures known as religions. The ways in which these systems have acted on the course of human history, and with each other, have been heavily dependent on the unique characteristics of religion. When looked at, even for the purposes of intellectual inquiry and not necessarily as a permanent conclusion, from an outside perspective that examines the effects of religion on the physical, observable world without accepting its claims made for qualities of transcendent truth and supernatural intervention, a particularly significant feature often, though not always, exhibited by systems of thought commonly understood to constitute religions, is the tendency to exclude other worldviews that are religious in nature. Though all systems by definition have the tendency to set out limits by which to define themselves and to be based on a self-understanding, directed at least some area of endeavor, as the best possible option, religions have been found to experience marked difficulty in interacting with each other because of the inability to admit shortcomings in a system aimed at the achievement of ultimate truth. An important step in the modern world toward the devising of cultures that can function at least to some extent outside the traditional paradigms defined by religions has been the formation of the basic concept of religion, which insofar as it judges such a system from an outside perspective, has been necessarily absent from most forms of religious vocabulary. The linguistic basis for the word “religion” is derived from the early Christian church official and writer St. Augustine, who used the term “religio” in his writings. His use of the word provided the influence for the later formation of the concept of religion but by itself expressed quite a different idea. One important note to be made in studying religions as such is understanding the extent to which the practice is based on a conceptual means for studying the world which only came about at a certain point and could only be allowed to occur under a certain specific set of circumstances.
In that St. Augustine is a figure in Christian and specifically European Christian history, the gradual conceptualization of religion as a general concept is one that has emerged through a specifically European experience and has been transmitted to other cultures in their interactions with the institutions and ideas of Europe. When St. Augustine made use of the word, he did so in accordance with the meaning it had at that time of “reverence” or “piety.” Augustine broadened the possible meanings available to the word “religio,” however, by recasting it to refer to the Church as a form of discipline and power comparable to that which had been established for that portion under the Roman Empire. Rather than occurring simply in terms of the self controller that a believer exerted on him or herself to remain within the rules of a system of faith, it was put into place by the various power structures involved in life, from the basic form represented by the family to the larger institutions of the church and the government. Augustine intended through his use of such vocabulary to make a central point about the role of the Church, which as a bishop he was closely involved in implementing. His ideology in this sense was derived partly from the Biblical language referring to a “Kingdom of Heaven,” which Augustine understood and proposed to be one that could be existed on Earth for the benefit of believers in the religion of Christianity.
The idea that the practice of religion provided a new basis for authority that transcended the particular institutions or power structures of a culture continued to be a potent force throughout the world of Western Christianity in the time since St. Augustine, which saw Christianity gradually broaden its reach as a world power. It proved an occasionally destabilizing force for the institutions of the Eastern areas governed by Christianity, which after a certain point split from the authority and practices of the Western European model of Christianity to transform into the system later to be known as the Byzantine church. In the West, the institutional structure of the Catholic Church provided a firm basis for controlling the tendency of Augustine’s “religio” for suggesting that earthly power was superseded by heavenly derived authority. This system to keeping a lid on potential challenges to the general basis along which society was organized only lasted for so long.
After the Protestant reformers began to mount challenges to the basis on which the authority of the Catholic Church, the concept of religion changed dramatically. The Church ceased to exercise as large a degree of political influence on its own and was forced to rely more on the resources and support of individual countries where it was based, in the process shifting the idea of religion to be more a function of the individual national identity of a particular country, through which that country’s power elite and institutions could be justified as providing for the existence of Christianity in such a region. Though at this time there was little latitude for the modern concept of religious freedom, with individuals feeling obligated to accept one of the various forms in which beliefs were offered by a religious institution, the idea of faith as having a universal basis in human practice was no longer something that could be realized, and the intellectual seeds were sowed for the development of the idea that religions constituted only one of the general expressions which intellectual life could take, and thus could be firmly separated from other sectors of life, such as public administration. The prioritization of churches as the source for religious ideas was downgraded through the period of tumultuous political and religious struggles that awaited Europe in the time after the end of the Catholic Church’s dominance over European life.
With the ground set for the process of intellectual definition of and division between religions, the philosophers of the Enlightenment period in European intellectual thought began to pay attention to the idea of it representing another aspect of the human experience that their general intellectual enterprise of cataloging and comprehension could place in context. During this time increased trade and the development of intellectual methods spurred on European thinkers to pay a greater degree of serious attention to the cultures outside Europe and to begin thinking of the human experience in terms of universals which could be found between the operation of one culture and another, entirely separate one. One of the areas in which this process occurred was in the form of enquiry into the various ways in which religion was practiced throughout the world, with the implicit suggestion that such religions might differ from each other only according to the circumstances of the culture which had produced them, and that Christianity might not possess ultimate authority over religious truth. Finding that religion represented a universal human impulse which could occur in a number of different forms, the Enlightenment philosophers accomplished the intellectual task of removing religious identity from the aspects of national identity, which up to that time it had been synonymous with, and opened up the possibility for the allowance of religious freedom based on an understanding that it could not be tied down to a single and universally practicable standard.
The ability to practice religious studies, which attempts to examine various religions from an objective standpoint that looks at them as expressions of the universal human impulse toward subscribing to some form of faith, comes from the development in human intellectual history of marking off the holding of religious beliefs, which are held to essentially include matters beyond the realm of everyday experience and incapable of being tested and proven through the scientific method, from other areas of cultural ideology and practice, such as that related to the understanding of ethnicity or nationality. With the adoption of a more critical and removed stance toward religious beliefs, human realms of endeavor including such things as art, politics and academic study were also understood to be essentially separate from the practice of religious beliefs, which could be seen as simple one aspect, not necessarily the most central one, of a person’s personality and activities. Measures were also passed in increasing numbers of different political systems for separating out the influence of religion, and deeming an essential aspect of a functioning political system its independence from any one source of religious authority. The scope of this trend, however, has its limits, which can be found to varying degrees throughout the world, with the United States, for instance, retaining an affection in its political culture for the expression of and public subscription to forms of religious belief understood to be universal expressions of the dominant monotheistic system of the country, while much of the Islamic world remains committed to the close relationship between politics and religion.